In recent years, capsule endoscopes (swallowable endoscopes in pill shape for medical use) which can be introduced from the mouth into body cavity and are designed to acquire information in the living body cavity through imaging or the like inside of digestive organs such as stomach or the like have been developed. As capsule endoscope of this sort, those incorporating in a capsule an illuminating unit composed of LED or the like, a solid-state imaging element composed of CCD, CMOS or the like, a transmitter for transmitting to the outside image data obtained by the solid-state imaging element, and a power supply unit composed of a battery or the like for driving these illuminating unit, solid-state imaging element and transmitter have been proposed (for example, see Patent Document 1).
When performing clinical examination using a capsule endoscope, electric wave transmitted by a capsule swallowed by a subject is caught by receiving antennae pasted at more than one portion, for example, eight portions, on the surface of the subject body, data thus caught are sent to a receiving apparatus via antenna cable, and is recorded by the receiving apparatus into CF memory or the like. Although it takes, for example, 8 to 10 hours until the clinical examination is completed, the subject is able to continue normal life while equipped with the receiving antennae and receiving apparatus. Upon completion of measurements by the capsule endoscope, the subject submits the receiving apparatus or the like to the hospital, hospital side then plugs the receiving apparatus into a cradle, and all measurement data recorded in the receiving apparatus are taken in a workstation which is connected to the cradle via USB cable. Following this, measurement results are observed as moving images on the workstation.
Patent Document: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-231186